A Light in Darkness
by Nevillefan
Summary: Taken away. Taken into a life of darkness. No windows. No doors. I'm slowly dying in this world unseen. But even in the darkest of shadows, hope can be found. The night cannot kill love.


**Disclaimer** I don't own anything Harry Potter, Jo Rowling does. This is a response to the Poet's Story Challenge issued by Hazel. The poem, _I'm trapped in this room_ which you see here in **bold** belongs to Hazel.

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**A Light in Darkness**

**I'm trapped in this room**

**All alone**

It is not finished. I refuse to surrender. I have been stolen into captivity by Voldemort but it will not end here. I am stronger than this. He comes for me. I stand my ground against him. His burning red eyes are all that I can see in this darkness. I feel him prying into my head, seeing my thoughts. I try to force him out but it is no use, he is too strong. He sees the secrets I have been hiding; he sees my friends, the plans, my love. He knows.

He laughs at his victory over me and I crash to the floor in pain, like ten thousand dull knives stabbing me everywhere. It will not end here!

**I cry out for a soul**

**But it's quiet outside**

**So no one hears me**

It has been… How long has it been since I was captured by Voldemort? A few hours? A few days? My head feels as though my heart has relocated itself to my brain. The pain is all that I can feel. The Cruciatus Curse is his favourite method; it is what he uses every time he comes to me. Somebody please stop this! My stomach churns and I vomit across the floor. The smell is intoxicating and my nausea causes me to fall to the floor like a dead fish. I no longer know how long I have been in this darkness. Where am I?

I cannot perform the magic I had once relied on as a means of surviving. He has taken my wand and I think this room is magically sealed. Food usually appears out of nowhere, only enough to ensure that I will not die right away. Where could I be? He has informed me that my friends are now dead. I do not know if this is true. He said he personally killed my love. He is only trying to break me. I will not crumble. My friends, my dear love cannot be dead. I refuse to believe it. I do not know what he wants from me.

**I'm trapped in this room**

**No way out**

I beat my fists against what I think is a wall. I scream and push against the stony material of my confine, I throw myself at its solid line. I scratch at its mortar, a futile attempt at doing something to escape. I bleed. I can feel the warm liquid seeping from my hands. The metallic taste of copper fills my mouth as I try to make my hands stop leaking blood everywhere. My eyes are now used to the darkness and I can see that I am in a room with four walls. My shoulder throbs from where I slammed against the wall. I am alone until he chooses to have his fun with me, to see me writhe in pain. No windows, no door. That is all I know of this black prison.

I do not know what he wants from me. Why does he not kill me? I try again at throwing myself against the wall, trying to break through whatever is holding me inside. I find myself crying as I slide to the filthy floor. He tells me things, awful things…of my love…what horrors he inflicted on her before bringing her to beg for death. I refuse to believe it, it cannot be true.

**The loneliness**

I have made a friend. I named him George. George is a spider. He does not talk but I enjoy the company.

**is sucking at my soul**

I think of my love. I remember her eyes--brown as honey that you would happily drown in just to have a taste of its sweetness--how they sparkled when she felt like being mischievous, which was almost always. Her hair, how it glowed with a copper brilliance in the summer sun. I miss her. I want to touch her. I want to feel her skin against mine again. She cannot be dead!

I call out her name, I know I will not receive an answer. I cry, something I should not be ashamed of doing, but I am anyway. iShe cannot be dead!/i Again, I beat my fists against the wall, though I know it will do no good. Anger, rage, hatred, fear. It's tearing at me, I know it is and I try to force my feelings into the mortar of my walls. Frustration! Why doesn't he kill me?! He has the secrets I had been entrusted to hold, what more could he want from me?!

**tearing at my heart**

I want to see my love. I remember her smell, flowers and fresh rain. She would play with my hair and make it even messier than it usually is. She found this incredibly humourous. I want to feel her hands in my hair again. I call out to her but I know she does not hear me. I do not know if she is alive or if she has suffered the same fate that I have.

George comes to see me. I put my hand down for him to crawl onto me. His touch tickles my skin, a feeling once caused by a beautiful woman, now a feeling reserved for a spider. I ask George his opinion on my situation. I ask him about her. He does not answer me, he is only a spider, and spiders do not talk.

**I'm trapped in this room**

There is no way out. I have now been in this room for...I wish I knew... Several months, I think, though I admit my senses are out of sync with reality. He comes for me again, and again. I know my brain has been addled by his choice of torture. I am not what I used to be. It is hard to think anymore, it is hard to move. He inflicts my misery with the curse of pain and tells me awful things of what he did to my love before granting her wish for death.

He tells me things about her that I alone should know, things only a lover should know. He reaches into his robes and pulls out a small object that catches the red glint from his eyes. A ring. Her ring. The engagement ring I had bought for my love before I had been captured and brought to this place of death, a promise of my love and of our happiness that would come. How did he get it? He laughs at my horror. Her being so close to me made her a target.

**No doors**

I am now certain that she is dead. She would never have taken off this ring. He must have stolen it from her when she could no longer resist him. It is my fault. Her love for me killed her. If I had stayed away from her, she would still be alive. It is my fault. I am also now certain that my friends are dead as he said they are for they promised to protect her...a promise I know they would keep with their very lives. If she is dead, then so are they. It is my fault they died. I killed them. I killed her.

**No windows**

George has told me that if succumb to the Dark Lord's wishes then I will be set free. George thinks this might be my way out. I have told him many times already that there is no way out and that I do not know what his wishes are. My body is too weak to move and I know my mind is not what it used to be. It hurts too much to eat. Her ring sits firmly in the palm of my hand, the only thing I have left of her. I do not want to think anymore. It rips at my heart too much to think. I scream but nobody hears me. I scream to release the pain of a broken heart. I scream to lighten the silence the bears down on me like a heavy stone.

George tells me to beg the Dark Lord for help. If there even could be an escape from this hell, to where would I escape? I have nobody.

**I'm becoming a lifeless soul**

He comes for me. I have realized that he wants nothing. He only wants to see my life slowly fade, to hear me scream for mercy. There is no other purpose to my still living. He says that if I beg properly he will release me. What would there be to go to? My love is dead, my friends have been killed. There is no escape from this Hell. Somebody, please end this misery!

**I don't know what to do**

I scream for mercy. He will release me if I beg. He only laughs. I must not be doing it right. I gravel, an act that shames my very nature. I do not know what he wants! End this! There is nothing left of me except my physical body and even that is nothing worth keeping. Please end this!

**Crying out once again**

Nobody hears me scream. Nobody, except him. He laughs as he leaves my crumpled body on the floor. My head feels as though it has been turned to mush and the feeling of ten thousand dull knives everywhere does not fade as it used to. How could I have come to this? My friends are dead because of me and I am helpless and weak. I killed them. It is my fault. I see George come to comfort me. The Dark Lord turns before leaving and sees George as well. My only friend…

**No one knows**

I know this is the end of me. I can feel my life draining. My tortured body no longer fights for existence in my dark world. It is hard to breathe. I want to die.

**No one cares**

I will no longer wait for him to stop my misery. I will finish it myself. I shall decide to stop living. Is that possible? To die of a broken heart? My mind is too far gone to think anymore. Sometimes I even forget who I used to be. George is dead, I was too afraid and too broken to stop it. I let him die. My friends are dead, my love…my reason for living...if I had not allowed myself to love her and allow her to love me in return... But soon, I shall be joining them. I only hope she can forgive me.

**I'm trapped in this room**

I see something that I have not seen since being enclosed in this blackness. A light, white as a mirror that catches the sunbeams. It blinds me. Is this it? I must be dying and the Angel of Death has come to claim me.

**All alone**

I feel…something strange. Two arms wrap around my waist and under my legs, hoisting me into my angel's arms. The angel shows me mercy by carrying me instead of making me walk. Another angel walks beside us. I hear it speak but I cannot understand what it is saying, though I do not need to understand the words to know that its voice is beautiful. Beautiful like my love. I am elated at the thought, though I think my body is too weak to show it.

**I'm slowly dying**

Through the blinding white light I can see with what is left of my eyesight. I see figures. My friends? I can see them! They are within view! Take me, dear angel, take me to them!

**In this world you see**

I can see my love! She waits for me as my angel brings us closer together. I am laid on the ground at her feet and, even with my eyes that have long since been cursed by darkness, I can see her face as she reaches a hand to me. The warmness invades me and I remember what peace felt like. How I have longed for her touch. I look into the warm brown eyes that have been in my dreams since the shadowy blackness became my fate. Why does she cry? I tell her I am sorry that I was the reason she was killed. I tell her of my love for her and she bends down to kiss me. She has found me. We are together again.

* * *

"Where is it?" Ginny asked.

Severus Snape quietly urged her not to speak, "Do you want us to get caught, girl? He's here somewhere," his words echoed off the dark dungeon passage, its corridors lit only by a few torches that hung sporadically along the stony walls. It had been six months since Harry had been captured, six long months since her love disappeared, and now he was found.

They turned and slipped down another corridor. Snape stopped. Ginny watched his face as he concentrated. She was about to ask again when she heard it. Her name.

Snape turned sharply to the sound of the voice and stopped in front of a small door that came to no higher than his chest. He lifted the heavy cast iron latch and the door creaked open. They peered inside the dark room and on the floor laid a body.

"Harry," Ginny gasped and felt the bile rise in her throat, she had to support herself against the wall. Snape stooped below the threshold to step inside, his black robes and hair disappeared into the darkness and all she could see was the outline of his sallow profile floating through the air.

He knelt to examine the body of the man inside, holding his wrist to look for the telltale sign of life. A pulse. "He's alive."

Ginny felt herself stumble into the room, "Alive?"

"Barely, but yes—_Weasley_! Don't let the door close or we'll be trapped in here with him!" Ginny looked behind her and noticed the door slowly creaking closed and she reached out just before it snapped shut. "We have to get him out of here."

Harry moaned feebly as Snape scooped him into his arms and carried him out into the firelight. Harry made some sort of scattered noise and Ginny looked to her love's dirty face. His sunken eyes—eyes that had once been the colour of precious emeralds, now only a dull green—rolled around aimlessly. "What's wrong with him?" Ginny asked, panicked.

"He's dying," Snape said with more emotion than Ginny thought he would be willing to admit to having. "Cruciatus Curse. I heard him screaming last night when I was here after a mission for the Dark Lord. I doubt he even knows who he is anymore."

Ginny ignored Snape's dismal words and whispered comfort to her love, "You're going to be fine, Harry, we're getting you out of here."

They turned another sharp corner, backtracking the way they had entered the dungeons. Harry moaned unintelligibly again.

Ginny started and pulled her wand from the inside pocket of her robes when she heard a small clanking sound from behind them, but nobody was there. The sound came again as though a small bit of metal were bouncing on the flooring. She looked down and saw a small glint of gold roll along the floor and stop at the corner where the floor met the wall and bent to pick it up.

A ring. Her ring. The engagement ring Harry had bought for her, the ring she had lost during a devastating battle. She had lost it and this is where it had ended up. From Voldemort's hands and into Harry's. She sprinted to catch up with Snape as he turned to make his way out into the garden, the small bit of moonlight guiding their way. In a far off distance across the field, Ginny could see Hermione and Ron standing at the edge of the trees, their rendezvous point.

Harry moaned her name quietly again. She tried to comfort him but he made no move of showing he understood her. Finally reaching the tree line, Snape laid Harry in the damp grass and went to ready the portkey. Ron wrapped his arms tightly around Hermione as she buried her head into his chest and began to cry at the sight before them. Ginny quickly fell to the limp body of her love and took him into her arms, cradling his head and for the first time that night, he looked at her. Crying and smiling at the same time, she placed a hand to his cheek and ran her other hand through his unkempt hair.

"I'm sorry," he said thickly.

"Sorry for what, Harry? We found you, it's going to be okay now."

"I love you," he breathed weakly and closed his eyes.

Ginny bent down to kiss him, to tell him she was real, "Harry, it's all right now, we're together again!" He took a haggard breath and she felt his life drain away from her arms. "No, Harry!" she called desperately to him.

"I'm sorry, Ginny," Hermione said softly through her own tears and bent down to wrap her arms around the sobbing woman's shoulders as she held her dead love in her arms.

"Don't leave me, Harry!" Ginny cried into the face of her love. "We found you, you can't me leave now! Come back!"

Ron, who stood behind them, broke with anger and felt his knees give way and he quickly sank into the wetness of the grass. He watched as his sister held Harry tight to her chest and sobbed into the body of his best friend, Hermione clung for dear sanity to Ginny. He looked up to the moon, what little light it gave off seemed to shine with an eerie brilliance, as though mocking their attempt to save their friend.

"We have to get out of here," Severus Snape said as crouched down to the spot where he had laid the dying man. "It won't be long before the Dark Lord knows he's missing," he looked to Ron and Hermione.

"We didn't make it in time," Ron said numbly and watched Snape gather Harry's body into his arms. "We were too late."

The End.


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